You just cannot beat a home made mince pie at Christmas ... and pastry making is a basic skill that every child should have a go at.
You could make whatever shape pastry top you like - just get creative and go for it!
Skills Check
Follow a recipe; follow food safety & hygiene rules; tidy away; use a sieve; rub fat into flour; handle and roll pastry; cut out rolled pastry; use weighing scales; use a citrus squeezer; garnish and decorate.
Equipment
Weighing scales, mixing bowl, wooden spoon, sieve, shallow muffin/cupcake tin, rolling pin, cookie cutters, tablespoon, citrus squeezer, clingfilm, oven gloves.
Allergens (Please note the allergens listed are indicative only. Allergens vary depending on brand; check the labels on the products you use)
Wheat | Gluten | Milk
May contain: Sulphites | Nuts | Eggs
Ingredients (makes 32 mince pies):
- 560g plain flour
- 240g butter, cut into cubes, plus extra for greasing
- 80g sugar
- Pinch of salt
- Grated zest and juice of 2 oranges
- 2 jars of mincemeat
- Icing sugar for dusting
Method
- In a bowl, sift the flour and salt together.
- Add the butter and rub into the flour until it looks like breadcrumbs.
- Add the sugar, grated zest and orange juice and mix together until the dough comes together. Knead the dough into a ball and cover with cling film. Place the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes.
- When you’re ready to roll the dough, set the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4 and grease a shallow muffin/cupcake tin.
- Roll out the dough to about 2mm thickness and with a round cookie cutter cut the bases out of the dough and gently press them into the tin.
- Place a tablespoon of mincemeat into each casing.
- Now cut out the tops of the mince pies and place on top of the filling.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the pastry has browned.
- Cool in the tin before removing and dust with icing sugar.
So thinking about mince pies...
Pastry is basically a dough which can be sweet or savoury. All types of sweet pastry tend to be high in both fat and sugar and therefore they should be eaten less often and in small amounts.
Mincemeat is a mixture of chopped dried fruit, peel, spices and either beef suet or vegetable shortening.
Nutritional Information
| - | Energy | 851KJ / 202kcal | 10% |
| Med | Fat | 7.5g | 11% |
| High | Saturates | 3.9g | 20% |
| High | Sugar | 19.4g | 22% |
| Med | Salt | 0.2g | 4% |
per 51g serving
% of an adult's reference intake
Typical values per 100g: Energy 1668KJ / 397kcal
Notes
A traffic light system is used on nutrition labels to make it easier to see which foods and drinks are lower in calories, fat, sugar and salt. Try and choose more ‘greens’ and ‘ambers’ and fewer ‘reds’, and stick to smaller portions of ‘reds’.
Just because a recipe or a food has a red traffic light doesn't mean you shouldn't eat it. Understanding why a food or recipe might have a red light can be helpful. For example oily fish is high in total fat and so any recipe containing oily fish is likely to be ‘red’ for fat. But it is recommended that we eat oily fish at least once a week because the type of fat it contains is beneficial for our health.
% Reference Intakes are also shown. Reference Intakes are guidelines about the approximate amount of particular nutrients and energy required for a healthy diet (based on an average-sized woman doing an average amount of physical activity). Most children will require less than these Reference Intakes. The contribution of one serving of a food or drink to the Reference Intake for each nutrient is expressed as a percentage.
